Andrew: Apart from how the funerals are funded, I would also be interested in where the money goes – was it mainly food & drink?
Do you have rough details of what the 85,000 baht was spent on?
Those comments of Saprang were made on a CNS PR tour of the Northeast. But wait a sec… what’s he doing in the Northeast?
The junta fired Kowit Wattana for supposedly not being able to make any progress in the bombing investigation. But I thought that the Council for National Security was supposed to ensure national security? And yet instead of contributing to the investigation, grilling the ISOC, or using his 14,000 strong torture squad to prevent future bombings, Saprang goes out brainwashing the public.
Sort of reminds me of the situation in the south in the months preceeding the coup. Instead of trying to control the Southern insurgency, Sonthi focused on toppling Thaksin. The result was that the insurgency got even worse and worse. Now, instead of trying to control the Bangkok insurgency, Saprang is focused on further defaming Thaksin. The situation is getting out of control.
Thanks Patiwat for pointing out a connection between the CNS and the PAD. Interesting that the coup was planned before April and over the ensuing 5-6 months the PAD was doing everything it could to drive events to the brink….
As to understanding Saprang the man, what was he doing (role, rank, etc.) in May 1992 when the military lost its political clout as the “rightful ruling class” of Thailand? One might posit that Saprang probably has always harboured ambitions to be the new Prem? In which case he probably sees 19 Sept as his chance to stage a counter-cop to the May-92 coup, and fulfil his personal ambitions. In which case Thaksin for him represented not a problem but an opprtunity.
I am new to New Mandala. I’m glad that the first visit I found this interesting thesis by Farrelly. Thanks very much.
A good critique of the village romaiticism and the nationalstic Tai studies is very much needed. The interesting thing is that among many Thai intelligentsia, the former is part of the “progressive” views, while the latter is not seen as nationalsitic at all.
Have you seen a Thai book by Yukti Mukdawijit — a critique of Chatthip’s “writing villages”?
Unlike Jon,I’ve had only a relatively brief encounter with the Thai Lue-5 weeks in what I was told was a Thai Lue village ,east of Chiang Rai.
The only Thai Lue I met who emphasised she was Thai Lue was a woman who lived near Chiang Saen.The others referred to themselves as Thai,as least to me ,a foreigner who could not speak Thai.
Thanks for the thesis. I’d definitely agree with your conclusion:
“To improve the situation [for Tais] requires going beyond reminiscences of social and ecological harmony.”
I think Tai Lue, at least, are slowly but surely finding their way into Tai society. I have undieing respect for my Tai Lue uncle-in-law. He has always acted very honorably towards me and I have returned the respect he has shown me. His whole family is thriving due to his leadership.
His cousin seems to be an intellectual in the Tai Lue community serving as a priest. He presided over my Tai Lue wedding with his niece and he has one young son who recently graduated with a PhD from Thammasat. Was running a computer school too.
The new university in Chiang Rai has provided Tai Lue in Chiang Rai with new educational opportunities. I actually taught some of my uncle-in-law’s neighbors. I was very sad though that ***they were embarassed about their Tai Lue identity at the university***.
Check out the annual Tai Lue festival in Chiang Kham. The show during the Khantoke dinner in the evening features a talent show of women who are divorced or whose husband is deceased, (I know this may seem rather sexist). When I was reading Anatole-Roger Peltier’s translation of a Tai Kheun text on marriage recently (below) I noted some interesting parallels. It’s worth further study.
Ratanaporn Sethakul has a wonderful economic history of northern Thailand that I used in my economic history class. My favorites of Sompong Witayasakpan are his translations of the Hsenwi and Mong Mao chronicles.
SIR – Your leader on Thaksin Shinawatra’s resignation as prime minister of Thailand made some good points, but it is wrong to think that he has “genuinely helped” the rural poor (“A blow to Thai democracy”, April 8th). This is a premature judgment. His rural-development policies may appear attractive on the surface, but dig deeper and you find a health-care system close to bankruptcy and a raft of government-backed loans that ignore the essential lessons of microlending. While buying motorcycles and mobile phones shored up his political base, and certainly helped “pump up domestic demand”, it did nothing to tackle the rising debt in the countryside.
With interest rates rising and the economy slowing, debt will now become a major problem. It would have been better for Thailand if Mr Thaksin’s ill-advised and self-serving grassroots policies played themselves out, which would have eventually turned his supporters away from him. The worry is that his resignation will spur the countryside to blame his successor when the inevitable destruction comes to pass, allowing him to return again in his ersatz role as “saviour”.
H.P. Boothe
Taling Chan, Thailand
Having read this, I would propose that the nature of your attack on the presentation of opinions made on the New Mandala blog is simply a case of your own glorious opinion being skewed by potential rational, undiluted dialog where you are not the god. If this is not so, why have you not provided more of what you claim to be missing, thereby educating us peon masses properly?
I think of this blog as a tutorial. How do you start a tutorial? With banal cerebrating that drives interest away? Or do you make it seem real, so much so that undergraduate could grab it with their bare hands and say “Yes! Finally a topic that breathes!?” Sadly there is no blog/quasi tutorial that I am aware you are leading and so I could only form an unreferenced opinion on what it would be like. 🙁
Enough of my rebuttal of your attacks Boothey, I’ll provide my limited opinion on the legitimization of NGO causes. Please savage me nicely.
From my experience in Nepal with the King in total control, enabled the rhetoric of NGO’s to be much more powerful. Especially in regards to welfare. Now that Gyanendra has submitted some of his power, these calls for welfare specifically from NGO’s in rural areas has most certainly become less cared for.
In attempting a parallel between the two situations, my totally unsubstantiated claim from speaking to various Nepali people is that rural empowerment by the “Maoist” alliance was always geared towards ‘the people’ being in a legitimate government. NGO’s largely would not support the 70% of the population who supported the Maoists, yet would support the King who emphasised the need for more obsequious NGO’s and tried to exploit his nations plight crudely to neo-liberal ‘activist’ academics not in favour of a political organisation bearing the ideology of Mao. Fittingly the majority of NGO’s I came in contact with in Nepal on various visits, were just as corrupt as him.
The questions that I am cerebrating are a) the legitimisation of activist causes in general being used from the position of the victim, thereby being sociologically unhealthy unto itself? and b)
can sufficiency theory really to be a positive push towards lifestyle change when the motivation for its implementation is clearly a patch for political upheaval?
I saw that thesis, and I thought it is interesting. One of the reasons I look forward to the fuller version is because I think that you will try to substantiate this link. Turning a weak statement such as “contributed some ideological legitimacy” (or “some of the ideological groundwork for the coup”, for that matter, which does not necessarily carry the same meaning as the previous quote) into something strong won’t seem to be easy to me (“some” > 2%, 15%, 55%, i.e. how significant is “some”, not the least in relation to all the other factors, and whose sense of legitimacy is it that you refer to?). When it has been achieved, though, the debate can start.
And let me make just one other quick comment. Perhaps you HP (and others) would be interested in engaging with the substance of the argument that I put in the conference paper. That is, that the campaign for rural empowerment waged by NGOs and activist academics has contributed some ideological legitimacy to Thailand’s coup. I think this is a topic worthy of debate.
Oh dear Mr Boothe (or, if I may, HP), you really are getting up a head of steam about my academic standards. I do appreciate the interest. If you are interested in reading some of my fuller published papers (on which the conference presentation builds) there are links to them on the “NM Bloggers” page (see the link at the top of the page). For what it is worth -those at the conference (perhaps a rather dim mob by your standards) did seem to appreciate the presentation. One colleague told me that he couldn’t even get in the door. Perhaps it was jammed.
Later this month I will post a draft of a paper I am currently writing on “local political culture”. This explores, from an ethnographic perspective, some of the issues I discuss in the conference presentation. When the time comes, your comments will be very welcome.
On the issue of selectivity. Of course, the way we present and package our research is selective. Readers can make their own judgement (and this blog welcomes all judgements) about how appropriate the selection is. But I am confident that the quotes I have provided about “sufficiency economy” do reflect commonly held perspectives in the part of Thailand where I work. I would love to hear other local perspectives and would be more than happy to feature them on New Mandala.
And, of course, I would love to read some of your own work!
In fact, he has two references to himself. To do him justice, he has promised (perhaps too strong a word) to come up with a scholarly version of his presentation notes, supposedly including full substantiation of all his empirical statements as well as a full engagement with the relevant literature. So, just wait for a few more weeks, and we will have what we are looking forward to!
nganadeeleg asks, ” What’s the difference between a blog and a research paper?”
That’s an excellent question. Mr. Walker’s “Lessons from the Thaksin era” presentation given at a supposedly academic conference, sounds very much like a blog post – a stream of highly contestable opinions with no backup (except of course the one citation of himself!). On the other hand, Mr Walker’s claims his blog post “The poor stay poor and the rich stay rich” is “an interesting contribution to the sufficency economy debate,” adopting the pretense of research.
I have seen blog posts that are meticulously researched and documented, and I have seen “research” papers with shoddy methodology and illogical conclusions. The issue is not whether comments are posted on blogs or appear in peer-reviewed journals, the issue is whether the content of the comments have merit. Mistaking form and content is the same error as blind belief in authority or “alarm that rural people in Thailand actually have opinions.”
Mr. Walker presents a series of statements with no attribution, no context (e.g. what question was asked to elicit the comment?), no indication of how representative the comments are of what population, and absolutely no reference to the factual validity of any of these statements. We can reasonably assume that these are not the totality of statements heard by Mr. Walker in his travels, therefore he must be making some selection of what statements to report and what not. How is this selection made? What are the filtering criteria? Alas, there is no mention of any of this.
Yet each statement carries with it a clear ideological viewpoint, by which we can conclude that the filtration used by Mr. Walker is exactly that – his personal ideological viewpoint, as presented in both blog entries and “academic” presentations.
Regardless of form, blog or research, content filtered on the basis of ideological viewpoint rather than factual validity or population representation can only be called one thing: propaganda. Sadly, whether from the Nation or Mr. Walker, that’s about all we get in the political discourse in Thailand.
nganadeeleg: Congratulations. At least there is one person who actually does what many others only preach. Just don’t turn your broadly critical view of modern society into a missionary, ideological, or sectarian approach. In this context, I do need a mobile, but I don’t need a TV. So, I guess, we both live sufficiency lifestyles, only that mine isn’t informed by Buddhist, but by Christian principles (although I am not a Christian). And, yes, I man needs a hobby (women as well), but only in a modest way, of course. However, who knows, if we just had enough money…
[…] of the things that struck me at the Critical Transitions in the Mekong Conference is the ongoing researcher interest, especially among MA and PhD students, in the Shan (or tai yaay). […]
Srithanonchai: Whilst the sufficiency principles apply generally, I was specifically replying to 21Jan’s question regarding the poor.
I have mentioned before that I already practice sufficiency principles on a personal level – I do have a tv (cheap, old box style), and I have a computer and internet for work. I have no need for a mobile phone. As for chatting on this blog, well, I still think a man’s got to have a hobby!
Polo: Thanks for putting things back on track.
I agree that sufficiency is being interpreted by different groups to suit their own agenda (both pro coup and anti coup groups are putting their own spin on it)
It’s still too early to make that judgement of the junta because we have not yet seen the new constitution, and unfortunately they are still bogged down being spooked, because for Thaksin, enough is never enough (despite what he keeps saying).
How this case (AHRC allegations) is handled will be a good indicator of whether the Surayud government is any better than the Thaksin government – we all know how Thaksin handled such matters!
I admit that I don’t really care whether torture is legal or not according to the Emergency Decree or the Interim Constitution.
The torture of prisoners in Iraq was condemned by the world not because of US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ legal opinion about whether it was legal or not – it was condemned because it was an insult to the dignity of all men.
I’m beginning to understand why the Thai newspapers have refused to publish the AHRC report (despite the glee with which they picked up on previous AHRC reports about Thaksin-government abuses). If Southerners knew that the royally-blessed junta was chaining citizens to dogs, we might as well kiss the South goodbye.
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From the archives: funding funerals
Andrew: Apart from how the funerals are funded, I would also be interested in where the money goes – was it mainly food & drink?
Do you have rough details of what the 85,000 baht was spent on?
New book on Lao history
hi Jon
I will contact Ajarn Souneth Phothisane, adn see if the library could purchase a copy of the nidan Khun Borom mentioned above.
Thanks a million
Saprang on the three pillars
Those comments of Saprang were made on a CNS PR tour of the Northeast. But wait a sec… what’s he doing in the Northeast?
The junta fired Kowit Wattana for supposedly not being able to make any progress in the bombing investigation. But I thought that the Council for National Security was supposed to ensure national security? And yet instead of contributing to the investigation, grilling the ISOC, or using his 14,000 strong torture squad to prevent future bombings, Saprang goes out brainwashing the public.
Sort of reminds me of the situation in the south in the months preceeding the coup. Instead of trying to control the Southern insurgency, Sonthi focused on toppling Thaksin. The result was that the insurgency got even worse and worse. Now, instead of trying to control the Bangkok insurgency, Saprang is focused on further defaming Thaksin. The situation is getting out of control.
Saprang on the three pillars
Thanks Patiwat for pointing out a connection between the CNS and the PAD. Interesting that the coup was planned before April and over the ensuing 5-6 months the PAD was doing everything it could to drive events to the brink….
As to understanding Saprang the man, what was he doing (role, rank, etc.) in May 1992 when the military lost its political clout as the “rightful ruling class” of Thailand? One might posit that Saprang probably has always harboured ambitions to be the new Prem? In which case he probably sees 19 Sept as his chance to stage a counter-cop to the May-92 coup, and fulfil his personal ambitions. In which case Thaksin for him represented not a problem but an opprtunity.
The cross-border Shan
I am new to New Mandala. I’m glad that the first visit I found this interesting thesis by Farrelly. Thanks very much.
A good critique of the village romaiticism and the nationalstic Tai studies is very much needed. The interesting thing is that among many Thai intelligentsia, the former is part of the “progressive” views, while the latter is not seen as nationalsitic at all.
Have you seen a Thai book by Yukti Mukdawijit — a critique of Chatthip’s “writing villages”?
The cross-border Shan
Unlike Jon,I’ve had only a relatively brief encounter with the Thai Lue-5 weeks in what I was told was a Thai Lue village ,east of Chiang Rai.
The only Thai Lue I met who emphasised she was Thai Lue was a woman who lived near Chiang Saen.The others referred to themselves as Thai,as least to me ,a foreigner who could not speak Thai.
Evaluating the 30 baht health care program
Thanks. This is really helpful.
New book on Lao history
I hope this Australian dissertation is published in book form one day:
Phothisane, Souneth. (1996). The Nidan Khun Borom: Annotated Translation and Analysis, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Queensland.
I already have my copy. It’s a model of scholarship.
The cross-border Shan
Thanks for the thesis. I’d definitely agree with your conclusion:
“To improve the situation [for Tais] requires going beyond reminiscences of social and ecological harmony.”
I think Tai Lue, at least, are slowly but surely finding their way into Tai society. I have undieing respect for my Tai Lue uncle-in-law. He has always acted very honorably towards me and I have returned the respect he has shown me. His whole family is thriving due to his leadership.
His cousin seems to be an intellectual in the Tai Lue community serving as a priest. He presided over my Tai Lue wedding with his niece and he has one young son who recently graduated with a PhD from Thammasat. Was running a computer school too.
The new university in Chiang Rai has provided Tai Lue in Chiang Rai with new educational opportunities. I actually taught some of my uncle-in-law’s neighbors. I was very sad though that ***they were embarassed about their Tai Lue identity at the university***.
Check out the annual Tai Lue festival in Chiang Kham. The show during the Khantoke dinner in the evening features a talent show of women who are divorced or whose husband is deceased, (I know this may seem rather sexist). When I was reading Anatole-Roger Peltier’s translation of a Tai Kheun text on marriage recently (below) I noted some interesting parallels. It’s worth further study.
1999 Kalè Ok Hno, le Kalè bourgeonnant (Jataka populaire tai kh├╝n de Birmanie), Bangkok, Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre.
http://www.efeo.fr/biographies/cadreindexcherch.htm
Ratanaporn Sethakul has a wonderful economic history of northern Thailand that I used in my economic history class. My favorites of Sompong Witayasakpan are his translations of the Hsenwi and Mong Mao chronicles.
Sufficiency economy, insufficient money
Just noticed your opinion in the economist from April 20th 06 Dr Boothe.
http://economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6823548
If you don’t remember:
SIR – Your leader on Thaksin Shinawatra’s resignation as prime minister of Thailand made some good points, but it is wrong to think that he has “genuinely helped” the rural poor (“A blow to Thai democracy”, April 8th). This is a premature judgment. His rural-development policies may appear attractive on the surface, but dig deeper and you find a health-care system close to bankruptcy and a raft of government-backed loans that ignore the essential lessons of microlending. While buying motorcycles and mobile phones shored up his political base, and certainly helped “pump up domestic demand”, it did nothing to tackle the rising debt in the countryside.
With interest rates rising and the economy slowing, debt will now become a major problem. It would have been better for Thailand if Mr Thaksin’s ill-advised and self-serving grassroots policies played themselves out, which would have eventually turned his supporters away from him. The worry is that his resignation will spur the countryside to blame his successor when the inevitable destruction comes to pass, allowing him to return again in his ersatz role as “saviour”.
H.P. Boothe
Taling Chan, Thailand
Having read this, I would propose that the nature of your attack on the presentation of opinions made on the New Mandala blog is simply a case of your own glorious opinion being skewed by potential rational, undiluted dialog where you are not the god. If this is not so, why have you not provided more of what you claim to be missing, thereby educating us peon masses properly?
I think of this blog as a tutorial. How do you start a tutorial? With banal cerebrating that drives interest away? Or do you make it seem real, so much so that undergraduate could grab it with their bare hands and say “Yes! Finally a topic that breathes!?” Sadly there is no blog/quasi tutorial that I am aware you are leading and so I could only form an unreferenced opinion on what it would be like. 🙁
Enough of my rebuttal of your attacks Boothey, I’ll provide my limited opinion on the legitimization of NGO causes. Please savage me nicely.
From my experience in Nepal with the King in total control, enabled the rhetoric of NGO’s to be much more powerful. Especially in regards to welfare. Now that Gyanendra has submitted some of his power, these calls for welfare specifically from NGO’s in rural areas has most certainly become less cared for.
In attempting a parallel between the two situations, my totally unsubstantiated claim from speaking to various Nepali people is that rural empowerment by the “Maoist” alliance was always geared towards ‘the people’ being in a legitimate government. NGO’s largely would not support the 70% of the population who supported the Maoists, yet would support the King who emphasised the need for more obsequious NGO’s and tried to exploit his nations plight crudely to neo-liberal ‘activist’ academics not in favour of a political organisation bearing the ideology of Mao. Fittingly the majority of NGO’s I came in contact with in Nepal on various visits, were just as corrupt as him.
The questions that I am cerebrating are a) the legitimisation of activist causes in general being used from the position of the victim, thereby being sociologically unhealthy unto itself? and b)
can sufficiency theory really to be a positive push towards lifestyle change when the motivation for its implementation is clearly a patch for political upheaval?
Sufficiency economy, insufficient money
I saw that thesis, and I thought it is interesting. One of the reasons I look forward to the fuller version is because I think that you will try to substantiate this link. Turning a weak statement such as “contributed some ideological legitimacy” (or “some of the ideological groundwork for the coup”, for that matter, which does not necessarily carry the same meaning as the previous quote) into something strong won’t seem to be easy to me (“some” > 2%, 15%, 55%, i.e. how significant is “some”, not the least in relation to all the other factors, and whose sense of legitimacy is it that you refer to?). When it has been achieved, though, the debate can start.
Sufficiency economy, insufficient money
And let me make just one other quick comment. Perhaps you HP (and others) would be interested in engaging with the substance of the argument that I put in the conference paper. That is, that the campaign for rural empowerment waged by NGOs and activist academics has contributed some ideological legitimacy to Thailand’s coup. I think this is a topic worthy of debate.
Sufficiency economy, insufficient money
Oh dear Mr Boothe (or, if I may, HP), you really are getting up a head of steam about my academic standards. I do appreciate the interest. If you are interested in reading some of my fuller published papers (on which the conference presentation builds) there are links to them on the “NM Bloggers” page (see the link at the top of the page). For what it is worth -those at the conference (perhaps a rather dim mob by your standards) did seem to appreciate the presentation. One colleague told me that he couldn’t even get in the door. Perhaps it was jammed.
Later this month I will post a draft of a paper I am currently writing on “local political culture”. This explores, from an ethnographic perspective, some of the issues I discuss in the conference presentation. When the time comes, your comments will be very welcome.
On the issue of selectivity. Of course, the way we present and package our research is selective. Readers can make their own judgement (and this blog welcomes all judgements) about how appropriate the selection is. But I am confident that the quotes I have provided about “sufficiency economy” do reflect commonly held perspectives in the part of Thailand where I work. I would love to hear other local perspectives and would be more than happy to feature them on New Mandala.
And, of course, I would love to read some of your own work!
Sufficiency economy, insufficient money
In fact, he has two references to himself. To do him justice, he has promised (perhaps too strong a word) to come up with a scholarly version of his presentation notes, supposedly including full substantiation of all his empirical statements as well as a full engagement with the relevant literature. So, just wait for a few more weeks, and we will have what we are looking forward to!
Sufficiency economy, insufficient money
nganadeeleg asks, ” What’s the difference between a blog and a research paper?”
That’s an excellent question. Mr. Walker’s “Lessons from the Thaksin era” presentation given at a supposedly academic conference, sounds very much like a blog post – a stream of highly contestable opinions with no backup (except of course the one citation of himself!). On the other hand, Mr Walker’s claims his blog post “The poor stay poor and the rich stay rich” is “an interesting contribution to the sufficency economy debate,” adopting the pretense of research.
I have seen blog posts that are meticulously researched and documented, and I have seen “research” papers with shoddy methodology and illogical conclusions. The issue is not whether comments are posted on blogs or appear in peer-reviewed journals, the issue is whether the content of the comments have merit. Mistaking form and content is the same error as blind belief in authority or “alarm that rural people in Thailand actually have opinions.”
Mr. Walker presents a series of statements with no attribution, no context (e.g. what question was asked to elicit the comment?), no indication of how representative the comments are of what population, and absolutely no reference to the factual validity of any of these statements. We can reasonably assume that these are not the totality of statements heard by Mr. Walker in his travels, therefore he must be making some selection of what statements to report and what not. How is this selection made? What are the filtering criteria? Alas, there is no mention of any of this.
Yet each statement carries with it a clear ideological viewpoint, by which we can conclude that the filtration used by Mr. Walker is exactly that – his personal ideological viewpoint, as presented in both blog entries and “academic” presentations.
Regardless of form, blog or research, content filtered on the basis of ideological viewpoint rather than factual validity or population representation can only be called one thing: propaganda. Sadly, whether from the Nation or Mr. Walker, that’s about all we get in the political discourse in Thailand.
Best regards,
HP Boothe
Sufficiency Supreme Command Headquarters
nganadeeleg: Congratulations. At least there is one person who actually does what many others only preach. Just don’t turn your broadly critical view of modern society into a missionary, ideological, or sectarian approach. In this context, I do need a mobile, but I don’t need a TV. So, I guess, we both live sufficiency lifestyles, only that mine isn’t informed by Buddhist, but by Christian principles (although I am not a Christian). And, yes, I man needs a hobby (women as well), but only in a modest way, of course. However, who knows, if we just had enough money…
Lessons from the Thaksin era
[…] of the things that struck me at the Critical Transitions in the Mekong Conference is the ongoing researcher interest, especially among MA and PhD students, in the Shan (or tai yaay). […]
Sufficiency Supreme Command Headquarters
Srithanonchai: Whilst the sufficiency principles apply generally, I was specifically replying to 21Jan’s question regarding the poor.
I have mentioned before that I already practice sufficiency principles on a personal level – I do have a tv (cheap, old box style), and I have a computer and internet for work. I have no need for a mobile phone. As for chatting on this blog, well, I still think a man’s got to have a hobby!
Polo: Thanks for putting things back on track.
I agree that sufficiency is being interpreted by different groups to suit their own agenda (both pro coup and anti coup groups are putting their own spin on it)
It’s still too early to make that judgement of the junta because we have not yet seen the new constitution, and unfortunately they are still bogged down being spooked, because for Thaksin, enough is never enough (despite what he keeps saying).
Why do we even call it ‘Thai’-land?
How this case (AHRC allegations) is handled will be a good indicator of whether the Surayud government is any better than the Thaksin government – we all know how Thaksin handled such matters!
Why do we even call it ‘Thai’-land?
I admit that I don’t really care whether torture is legal or not according to the Emergency Decree or the Interim Constitution.
The torture of prisoners in Iraq was condemned by the world not because of US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ legal opinion about whether it was legal or not – it was condemned because it was an insult to the dignity of all men.
I’m beginning to understand why the Thai newspapers have refused to publish the AHRC report (despite the glee with which they picked up on previous AHRC reports about Thaksin-government abuses). If Southerners knew that the royally-blessed junta was chaining citizens to dogs, we might as well kiss the South goodbye.